Author Archives: Matt Deas

Tales of Tactics and Terrain

May 14, 2012 – 12:36 pm

  In all miniature games I have ever played, terrain and its use is almost an afterthought. Some trees to hide behind, a hill or building to protect your forces from enemy shooting. We all love the idea of awesome terrain, just so long as it stays out of the way and doesn’t impact the [...]

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Carpentry in Hell 101

April 23, 2012 – 8:00 am

This week I want to work on a little bit of terrain for my Hell Dorado board. since I have been working on my Immortals company recently, I thought, “Why not create something Asian influenced?” I wanted to make something “man made” to give the board a bit of contrast to all the natural terrain [...]

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Building My Immortals Company

April 1, 2012 – 8:00 am

  I think I speak for every tabletop wargamer when I say I would love to game with an army of really, really, ridiculously well painted minis. Sadly, due to many factors (lets call them life), I have to accept that this dream is unrealistic. So bearing that crushing burden, I know I’m never going to [...]

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Starting A New Faction: A Blog Of Sorts.

March 12, 2012 – 8:00 am

  There comes a point in every young gamer’s career when he or she feels the urge to crawl from under the comfort blanket of their familiar faction and try something new. This can happen for many reasons: completion of  the original faction, a new hobby challenge, the challenge of mastering a different play style, [...]

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Zaxaan Part 3

February 20, 2012 – 8:00 am

Hello everyone, welcome to the latest installment of Tales From Alamut. Today I’ll discuss the final touches to finish the Zaxaan mini I have been working on. To finish the metal areas off, I applied some weathering effects: starting with a thick wash of Vallejo Game Colour Sepia Ink. I applied this over the whole of [...]

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NMM: an Acolytes’ Struggles

January 30, 2012 – 8:00 am

Welcome to the latest installment of the Tales of Alamut! In this article I’m going to continue working on Zaaxan; Angra Mainyous’ Herald, and try to give an insight into the techniques used with NMM, or non-metallic metals. NMM is a technique used to render the effect of light striking metallic objects using non-metallic pigments. [...]

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Zaxaan Part 1: Skin tones.

January 9, 2012 – 8:00 am

For the next couple of installments of Tales of Alamut I want to focus on Cipher Studios’ newest addition to the Hell Dorado range: Zaxaan. Zaxaan is a large, extremely detailed miniature that will be the centerpiece of any Demonic company he is included in. Because of his size and amount of skin to paint, [...]

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Creating Resin Terrain

November 28, 2011 – 8:00 am

Helldorado is a game that can feature a lot of terrain, and depending on scenario and a player tactics, it can be useful to place multiple pieces of the same terrain element. In this edition of Tales from Alamut I’d like to show you the process I used to make multiple stalagmite terrain elements. The [...]

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Deciphered: Tales from Alamut #1

November 7, 2011 – 8:00 am

A Step by Step Guide to Lighting Effects by Matt Deas Glow effects and light sources are nothing new in miniature painting, however they can be very challenging to apply effectively. In this article I’d like to demonstrate a straightforward method of applying lighting effects to a mini. I will focus on the grenades on [...]

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